The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (6 page)

“Sorry about that, Five,” said the researcher.

“You think Dr. Melnicker win like this one?”

“I’m sure he will. Now go back to sleep.”

“I’ll try. But it won’t be easy.”

“Try anyway. Goodnight, Five.”

Paul turned off the tape. Then he grinned at Goodman. “Would you like a little mail-order analysis, Sam?”

“Go ahead,”

“He sees sexual fulfillment as a plumbing conception. The faucet is a symbol of the dreamer’s penis, the turning of the faucet is genital manipulation, and the flow of water is ejaculation.”

Sam Goodman laughed. “You really spoiled his fun, Paul.”

“If I had known, I’d have let him sleep.”

They walked down another long corridor which Sam Goodman called “Dream Street.”

It was lined with a series of rooms, each occupied by one of the sleepers. Peter could hear gentle snores coming from a couple of them.

“Everybody’s already in the sack but you,” said Goodman.

He opened a door marked seven and ushered Peter into a small cubbyhole. It was monastic in style—a cot with khaki army blankets, a chair, a washbowl, and a toilet compartment. On the wall next to the sleeper’s head was a panel box with electrode leads, a speaker, an ordinary doorbell, and a microphone, all of which communicated to the EEG room. That was all.

Sam grinned at Peter’s expression.

“Well? How do you like it?”

“It isn’t exactly the Beverly Hilton.”

“What did you expect? Wall-to-wall carpeting? Louis Quinze furniture? You’re not going to live here, you’re going to sleep here. Now pour yourself into your pajamas and we’ll get this thing on the road.”

When Peter was ready, Goodman pasted the EEG electrodes—tiny discs at the ends of long colored wires—on his forehead, scalp, and ear lobe, and just over the eyes.

“How does this stuff feel?”

“Pretty sticky.”

“It’s colloidal glue. Used to patch up professional boxers. We’ve found it works better than adhesive tape.”

He patched other electrodes which measured heartbeat to Peter’s chest, and still others to his arms. These, he explained, were part of the electromyograph setup used to measure micromuscle activity. He connected a photocell device attached to the bedsprings which would record those periods in which Peter would toss and turn in his sleep.

Then Goodman turned off the lights. “Goodnight, Pete. Happy alpha and delta rhythms.”

The door closed and Peter was alone. He lay there feeling ridiculous, like some mechanical man wired for sight and sound. Wires sprouting out of his head like the Medusa.

After a long time, he fell asleep.

He checked in at the Sleep Lab every night for the next ten days.

First Charlie Townsend would wire him up. Then sleep. Then the raucous bell would sound, and he would wake up abruptly. Then Townsend’s voice, over the speaker in his cubbyhole:

“Tell us about your dream, Seven.”

And always the same answer. “I don’t remember any dream.”

Each night, they woke him three or four times. Each time he could remember nothing about any dreams. Not at that point. Not at the time they woke him up. He never remembered any dream when he was
supposed
to.

Yet, at the times he wasn’t supposed to be dreaming, when his eyes showed no rapid movement and the valley patterns on the EEG showed all quiet, he experienced them all.

By actual count, he had the Lake Dream three times, the Automobile Dream, the House Dream, the Tree Dream, and the Tennis Dream twice, and the rest of them once. Throughout, as always, they were his constant companions.

Whenever he checked in at the lab, he sensed that he was an object of some curiosity on the part of the staff. They stared at him, then turned away. He became increasingly aware that there was something special about his case. He tried to pump Charlie Townsend about it. But Townsend said, simply, “Sorry. I’m not supposed to discuss anything with you. Not until the data’s all in and I get clearance from Doctor Goodman.”

It was “Doctor Goodman” now, instead of “Sam.” Peter found this a little too professional, a little too serious. It made him uneasy. They were all acting too damned mysterious. There was altogether too much hush-hush where he was concerned.

He noted that ever since the first night, Goodman had not appeared at the lab. It was as though he were avoiding some personal confrontation with Peter. Peter called him three times at his office before he finally answered.

“Sam, what’s my diagnosis?”

It seemed to him that Goodman’s voice was guarded.

“Can’t give any results till all the horses are in, Pete.”

“When will that be?”

“In a couple of days.”

“Look, isn’t there
something
you could tell me?”

“Take it easy, Pete. I told you, I’ll need a few more days.”

He hung up. Something told him Sam Goodman was stalling. There was a certain tautness in his voice, a strain, an evasiveness. Or so it seemed. But then he thought, maybe I’m just imagining all this, looking for some kind of bogeyman.

He slept in the lab ten nights in a row. On the eleventh day he called Goodman again.

“Sam, it’s been a few more days. Now, let’s talk about it, okay?”

There was a long pause at the other end. Then he heard a sigh.

“Okay, Pete. My office. Four o’clock this afternoon.”

Sam Goodman put a match to his pipe. It went out. He tried another.

“Pete, we’ve come to some conclusions. Or, rather, conjectures.”

“Yes?”

“At first we thought you were simply an extreme case of dream amnesia. But after a few arousals, it’s clear to us that you’re suffering from what we can dream deprivation. A certain amount of this isn’t unusual. But yours is total. You’re a man who doesn’t dream at all. You had practically no rapid eye movements. Your REMs barely recorded. Same with the EEG. Your brain waves were very small, gave only very weak signals.”

“But I did dream, Sam. I had the same ones I told you about.”

“Maybe. But they didn’t register as dreams.”

“Then what the hell
are
they?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been in sleep research for years, and they’re unique in my experience. Staub called them hallucinations, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Then that’s what they must be. Or they could be memory plants, visions, revelations. Hell, I don’t know. Pete, you’re going through some kind of wild psychic experience. That’s all
I
can tell you.”

“No,” said Peter. “You know more than you’re telling me. Look, give it to me straight. I’ve got something to worry about here—is that it?”

Goodman avoided his eyes.

“I wish you hadn’t asked me that.”

“But I
am
asking you.”

Sam Goodman’s pipe went out. He picked up a book of matches to relight it. Then he threw the matches back onto the desk.

“Pete, first you’ve got to understand—I’m not very good at playing young Doctor Jones, the way they do on television. All I can give you are certain facts as I know them. A certain amount of normal dreaming is a requirement of any human being. Both physically and mentally. It seems to give immunity against psychosis.”

“Go on.”

“Nobody seems to really know why. Oh, there are theories. When people are dream-deprived, they’re unable to discharge certain tensions, infantile or otherwise. The nightly dream cycle provides release for these pressures. If the cycle is suppressed, then the pressures may be dammed up and at some point could break through. When this happens, the mind is swamped by distorted images. The senses are confused. Ordinary perceptions become blunted. Put it another way. When we dream, it allows us to go quietly and safely insane each night of our lives, instead of each day.”

“In other words, I’m on my way. Sooner or later, I’ve got to crack up. Go crazy. Psycho.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But that’s what you mean.”

“Look,” said Goodman carefully. “I agree, you have a problem. And it’s serious. But all this is premature. We just don’t have any precedent …”

“Damn it, Sam,” Pete said furiously, “will you level with me? If I don’t start to dream normally pretty soon, I’ve got a brilliant future as a gibbering idiot. Is that it? Or
isn’t
it?”

“Take it easy, Pete. We’ve still got some time. There has to be some way to pull you out of this. Somebody will come up with something.”

He sat there, shaken. Sam continued talking, but Pete hardly heard what he was saying.

All that night he was unable to sleep.

The next morning, bleary-eyed and haggard, he flew north to a town in Mono County called Bridgeport. He had been retained by the California Indian Legal Services and the Native American Rights Fund to testify on behalf of a small colony of Paiute Indians who were trying to keep twenty acres of ancestral land. The government wanted it for a federal reclamation project.

It was his job as an expert to testify that the members of the colony were legitimate descendants of the original Paiutes; further, that their ancestors had occupied this land long before the first white man had come to their valley in the high Sierra, and that the occupation of the land was entirely valid, by treaty. If the Paiutes lost this land, and therefore a settled status, they could not qualify for federal housing aid and other programs designed to improve their jobless, welfare-dependent lives.

When he was called upon to testify, he blew it.

It wasn’t just that he was tired. Somehow, he couldn’t coordinate his testimony. He had lapses of memory. He had to refer repeatedly to files from his briefcase. He shuffled documents interminably, trying to find what he needed. He could hear the restless movements of those in the hearing room, the shocked whispering. He stammered and stuttered through his opening statement. An attorney from the Department of the Interior began to cross-examine him and somehow trapped Peter into contradicting himself. Everything seemed involuted, unreal. Peter’s testimony, although sympathetic, turned out to be damaging. He practically
conceded that this particular band of Paiutes were squatters on someone else’s land. Under a patent issued in 1914 by the old General Land Office and under the Desert Land Act, the land had been sold to a non-Indian who claimed it was unoccupied. Peter knew this was illegal. But because he did not have his wits with him this day, he was unable to prove it.

When the hearing was over, he walked out red-faced. A senator on the Senate Indian affairs subcommittee who was sympathetic to the Paiute cause glared at him. The people who had retained him were hostile, tight-lipped. The few Paiutes who were there simply stared at him. He knew he would remember those hopeless, hurt faces for a long, long time.

He walked out onto the street. He swayed dizzily. He knew he could not travel back to Los Angeles, not now. He was just too tired. He had to sleep.

He found a motel and checked in.

First, he had the Baby Dream. He was in a quiet room, a child’s nursery, late at night. There was a white crib, pink blankets. And the sound of a baby’s cry. He picked up the baby and held it. He could feel the fretful child’s hot cheek against his and smell the odor of feces and urine, and then she appeared in the doorway, wearing a nightgown, staring at him, looking upset, and it was Marcia….

Next, almost immediately, the Cliff Dream. It was night, and he was on a grassy knoll just at the edge of a cliff, and below, in the valley, you could see the winding river and the myriad lights of a city on both banks. He was with Marcia and both of them were naked, and then they sank to the grass and she spread her legs for him, and he was on top of her….

And finally, the Automobile Dream again.

The same as before, to the last detail. It was an open car, and they were going very fast. They could see the branches of the trees flash by overhead. The sky was clear and spattered with stars. The
moon was a thin crescent. Around her neck the woman with the red hair wore a red scarf. Her hair was flying in the wind, and there was a look of ecstasy on her face. He could hear her singing, but he could not identify the song. The motor hummed and purred. The ride was smooth, without vibration. He had the illusion that soon they would take oft as though they were on an airport runway. Soon they would leave the ground and fly over the trees and toward the stars. Then the girl’s eyes were closed, her head thrown back. She was still singing, but the words were lost in the wind.

But again, as before, it was the car itself that enchanted him. Long and low and sleek. Large curving fenders. Black broadloom carpeting; red leather upholstery. Burled walnut-grain instrument panel. The color-indicator speedometer. He noted the mileage on the speedometer gauge: exactly 18,342 miles. Although from his position at the wheel he could not see the outside, he knew what it looked like.

His passenger continued to sing, oblivious to everything. Her eyes closed, an ecstatic smile on her full, red mouth.

He stepped on the gas. The speedometer needle changed color. From yellow to red. Sixty. Seventy. They were flying now. They were really flying….

He awoke. He had slept through the whole afternoon, and then the night. He dressed, had breakfast, and drove out to the airport.

On the plane he began to think about the Automobile Dream. It was beginning to obsess him. Of them all, it was the most detailed, the most specific. He could literally
see
that car. It was almost frightening how clearly he could see it. And the exact mileage. Eighteen thousand, three hundred and forty-two miles. How specific could you get?

It was an old car. A quality car, classic, built long ago. That much he knew. But he wasn’t a classic car buff; old cars didn’t interest him. He had seen an exhibit of them once in a museum; he did not remember where. He’d also seen custom car rallies: the men
in those old-fashioned driving caps and wearing big gloves and goggles; the women in wide brimmed hats with the veils coming down over their faces. He’d see them parade the cars along the freeway—Model T Fords, Pierce Arrows, and the like. They belonged to some kind of club, he knew. Met for lunch, attended auctions, watched the ads for classic cars.